Time-to-troubleshoot can boost service margins

With the rapid growth in vehicle electronics, the electrical systems
for passenger cars and working vehicles are becoming increasingly
more complex. As a result, fault diagnosis of today’s vehicle
electrical systems has become an onerous task.

These complex vehicle electrical systems can be unreliable—fuses
blow, terminals become corroded, ground studs fail, etc. Rapid fault
rectification saves money, enhances brand image in the eyes of the
customer, and reduces commercial vehicle downtime; so whatever can
be done to speed this process along and make it more accurate is
good for business. Perhaps most important is the experience for the
customer. Few things are more frustrating than a long wait for a
vehicle to be fixed, especially if it is a return visit to the
garage because the original repair did not cure the problem. The
customers’ experience affects brand image, which is vitally
important in this competitive market. For commercial vehicles such
as heavy trucks, delivery vans, and taxis, excessive downtime has a
direct effect on revenue for customers’ business.

Identification, profitability
Vehicle service organizations are often OEM-franchised networks.
Speedy fault identification is important to their profitability, and
managers expect the OEMs to provide an efficient environment for the
technicians.

Although fault diagnostic systems continue to improve, in most
cases, a technician has to read and research through the
OEM-provided documentation to do the job. And because of the high
system complexity and even greater configuration complexity,
technicians could use some help from technological advances in
vehicle documentation. The service technician’s documentation used
for troubleshooting usually is electronic paper, and sometimes still
real paper. Traditional documentation is static, hard to navigate,
and not configuration-specific.

These deficiencies impair troubleshooting and problem-fixing, which
results in increased vehicle downtime and maintenance costs. Worse
than that, the serviced vehicle has to be re-fixed if the first-time
repair was incorrect.

No doubt, better technology is needed for the technician.
Fortunately, new software provides a much more productive
documentation and troubleshooting environment—it’s revolutionizing
the way documentation is created and changing the technician’s
technological toolbox for troubleshooting in a way that’s never been
done before.

Changing the Way Vehicle Documentation Is Created
Producing documentation manually is slow, costly, and error-prone.
With this new technology, documentation is more accurate because it
automatically reuses data from engineering and manufacturing,
requiring fewer manual translations and fewer loopbacks between the
design and manufacturing engineers and the technical publications
preparers.

The electrical data model is leveraged to deliver a smart
environment to the technician (Figure 1). This data model
understands all aspects of the information, and thus the software is
able to provide true functionality to the documentation, boosting
technician productivity. With Mentor Graphics Capital Publisher,
vehicle manufacturers have found that the cycle time to produce
publications is drastically reduced and the software’s smart
delivery system improves the efficiency of technicians in the repair
shop.

Figure 1: Capital Publisher enables dynamic and intelligent
reuse of engineering design data and manufacturing updates that
can be customized and then linked to diagnostic and
vehicle-specific configuration information.

Revolutionizing the Service Technician’s Troubleshooting
Environment
A technician needs as much help as possible to understand the
extreme complexity of modern vehicle electrical systems. Using
Capital Publisher, vehicle-specific documentation can be delivered
as a navigable package to use in an HTML browser. The
Java-script–based smart client provides a zero-install,
browser-based application that can be deployed onto any system and
run in both an online or a completely offline environment (Figure
2).

Figure 2: The smart client enables delivery of a vast amount
of vehicle-specific data for troubleshooting onto the service
technician’s computer and ease of use through a web-based
browser.

As a result, Capital Publisher brings a brand-new experience to the
repair technicians who are using the service documentation. The rich
functionalities built into the smart client tool provide more
accurate service information more efficiently. In addition, the
smart client has a built-in function to incorporate diagnostic and
service procedures.

The following are some of the features in this new technology that
make it a revolutionary documentation environment for service
technicians. Using this environment, a technician can move
seamlessly across many related artifacts; for example, jumping at
the click of a button from a schematic to a wire list to a location
view to a repair procedure, with convenience aids such as windowing
and pan and zoom. Metadata is instantly available so the technicians
can access items such as expected pin voltage, fuse resistance, wire
color, or component part number, but without excessive screen
clutter. The software provides electrical intelligence so the
technician can easily trace troublesome signals through the maze of
connectors and devices.

And for very complex situations, more advanced features are
available, such as progressive revealing of connectivity (“click and
sprout”). All this information can be displayed in the technician’s
local language via a hidden dictionary. An example of such an
intuitive, highly productive technician environment is shown in Figure
3.

Figure 3: A close-up look at the new troubleshooting
environment for service technicians via the Capital Publisher
Technician Environment.

All component-level service information is tied to the component
through hot links. With one mouse click, all information related to
a component can be obtained, such as 2D face-view, 2D/3D location
view, service procedures, and any other documentation related to
this component if it’s available. The same object (e.g., device,
connector, wire), shared in several sheets or systems is unified and
can be accessed in a mouse click.
Automobile VIN (vehicle identification number)-based filtering
removes all ambiguous information. It not only filters out
non-vehicle–specific electrical components in the schematic, but it
also can filter out vehicle mechanical components. VIN-based
information is used to link with the repair record, service
bulletin, and warranty recalls.

At any pin or device, the click-and-sprout capability allows the
technician to construct his or her own schematic from the device and
connections of specific interest. A schematic diagram through the
click-and-sprout also can be created with assistance from the
troubleshooting procedures.

Conclusion
Figuring out what’s wrong with a vehicle has to be done quickly. For
cars, the speed and accuracy of diagnosis and repair effects brand
loyalty. Manufacturers measure and track “first-time fix rate.” For
working vehicles, such as aircraft and military, faster and more
accurate diagnosis and repair means the vehicle is back in service
more quickly.
Technicians have diagnostic systems and repair procedures that they
use to diagnose vehicle faults. But traditional diagnostics isn’t
100% effective for electrical systems. The tools are correct about
60% of the time; for the rest of the time, technicians use their
experience, skill, knowledge, and documentation to solve vehicle
problems. And with higher system complexity and increasing
configuration complexity, the technician’s job has undoubtedly
become more difficult.

When installed at a service center, the Capital Publisher Technician
Environment is changing this situation. Now all design data,
including vehicle-specific configuration information, can be shared
with service technicians, providing accurate information from the
system level down to the component level. The software also can be
linked to diagnostic codes to quickly narrow the fault down to the
specific area of a problem.

With its smart-client delivery capabilities, this new software
enables automatic, intelligent, and dynamic reuse of a vehicle’s
electronic design and manufacturing information. This solution
dramatically reduces the effort and time needed to prepare vehicle
documentation, greatly improves the accuracy of the information, and
revolutionizes the service environment.

Raj Lakhanpal has consulted at Mentor Graphics for seven years.
In addition, he has over a decade of engineering experience
devoted to electrical distribution systems. He has worked as the
lead consultant on deployments in automotive, mil/aero,
construction, and heavy trucking OEMs and suppliers. In his
current position, he continues to evolve and strives to enable
customers to realize value by adopting proven methods and
electrical platform engineering tools.